Hi. Please can you help a complete beginner?

I am trying to install Ubuntu onto a fairly old Sony Viao Laptop. The Linux OS will not run from the CD drive, locking up with a flashing underline cursor in the top-left corner of the screen, shortly after the Linux logo screen has been displayed.

I have tried using the CD helper method (by running the CD from inside Windows Explorer) but I cannot get this to work either: a message 'Error: prefix not set' appears, then after several seconds, the lock up occurs as already described. In 'verbose' mode the line displayed before the laptop locks is '[18.536937] isapnp: No Plug and Play device found'.

I have also tried intalling from the USB with same result (although this laptop will not boot from a USB stick).

The laptop works in all other respects, and has only Windows 2000 on it, as a clean installation on a newly formatted drive with a FAT32 file-system.

Any ideas, please, even if to point me in the right direction?

Hi and Welcome to LQ!
When you boot up and you see the (Grub) Menu and select which system you want to boot (Ubuntu, Windows) Is there a menu item that allows you to boot into Recovery Mode? If yes, try to do that. If it's possible and you can login to a virtual terminal then your problem may well involve a badly configured X-server. You can look at the log file by entering this command at the prompt.
Then you will be able to look for errors and start to diagnose your problem. Errors can be found quickly by looking for lines containing "(EE)" near the beginning of the line.
ciao,
jdk

Hi jdk; thanks for your prompt answer.

Sadly there is no option to boot into recovery mode; Windows and Ubuntu are the only options. (There is no such option when 'escape' is pressed during the boot, either.)

Do I understand correctly that you cannot boot the Ubuntu CD to begin the installation?
If you have windows 2000 on it, how old is the computer? Can you post some info, cpu, RAM, graphics card?
And which Ubuntu are you trying to install? If it is the latest 11.04 and your computer is that old, it may not work.

Hello.

The PC is quite old, I'm afraid; its specification is below (which is how it came out of the box). The version of Ubuntu is 11.04 i38.

Sony VAIO (Laptop/Netbook) PCG-N505SN
Board: Sony Corporation PCG-N505SN(GB) 01
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies LTD R0208H0 12/14/99
400 megahertz Intel Celeron
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache
Not hyper-threaded
64 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
NeoMagic MagicGraph256AV driver [Display adapter]
Intel(r) 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
Primary IDE Channel [Controller]
Secondary IDE Channel [Controller]
Ricoh R/RL/RT/RC/5C475(II), R5C520 or Compatible CardBus Controller
Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller

If the OS is incompatible with this PC, do you know if an older version of any Linux OS is likely to work?

Thanks again.

You have only 64MB RAM, that really is a show stopper. I would try it with antiX, the developers claim that it will run with that amount of memory, but they recommend at least 128MB. Your best choice would be to upgrade the memory, if possible, or to run it CLI only.

By the way, I wouldn't recommend to run older versions, at least if you want to connect that machine to the net, they have known security holes. That would make your system vulnerable.

Thank you for your suggestion.

I guesss CLI is command line interpreter? Can you direct me to some suitable information about that kind of set-up? (I would not know, for example, how to install Linux to be able to use that - it is an installation problem I have, not a usage problem.) In the meantime, I will try antiX, cross my fingers, and start saving for a RAM upgrade.

Thanks.

If you are going to try AntiX, there is a link below with a lot of information on installing and using it.

http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Howto_articles

If you have no problem with running CLI only ir is very simple to install it that way.
I would recommend Debian for that, when installing choose the expert install option in the CD's bootmenu. Install as you would do with a desktop system, but when it comes to the software selection de-select the Desktop. That way you will get a small and fast CLI system.

Why not trying DSL (Damn Small Linux), here:
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

It can run smoothly with 16 MB RAM.

Thank you all, for those helpful pointers and suggestions; it is appreciated. (I may go quiet for a day or so...)